Sunday Top Ten - Wizard of Oz quotes

Next to Casablanca, I might call The Wizard of Oz the most quotable movie ever. It still perplexes me how its wonderful and memorable screenplay didn't earn Oscar recognition. Well, it doesn't have to work too hard for Awards Prognosticator recognition. For a film I can quote pretty much verbatim, it was no problem finding at least ten lines to fill this list. The hard part was deciding which ones to leave off!

10.
“You have no power here! Begone, before somebody drops a house on you!”

This is one of my trusty stock phrases for simply telling people to go away. They usually laugh at the reference and continue to hang around. Maybe I should just stick to “get outta here!” Or maybe I should try saying it in the voice of Billie Burke (that's Glinda), who's lilting good-witch voice is oddly threatening when she chirps this line.

9.
“There's no place like home.”

How could I omit the line that is most closely associated with the material? You could watch the first 95 % of the movie a dozen times over, and you'll still have not seen the movie until you hear Dorothy's closing words. That's the whole point of the story wrapped up in five syllables.

8.
“I'm melting! melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?”

I've already indirectly described this line (memorably screeched by Margaret Hamilton) by its attachment to the most awesome movie death of all time. Gotta love a villain who chooses to go out on a rhetorical question. Even if it hadn't been Dorothy who threw the water, I'll bet she'd have still cried “Who would have thought a ___ like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?”.

7.
“I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!”

As counterpoint to the last quote, which exposes the Wicked Witch of the West as weak and pitiful, this quote epitomizes her at her most imposing. It leaves such a terrifying impact on kids watching, that it's permeated modern colloquial English. Nowadays, anybody worth their weight in cinematic credibility won't threaten anyone without extending the threat to "your little dog too".

6.
“Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more.”

And the award for biggest understatement of 1939 goes to Dorothy for her dumbstruck utterance upon entering Munchkin Land. You try coming up with something intelligent to say if you were to walk onto that beautiful set for the first time. I've never been to Kansas, but I think of this phrase whenever I wake up to find myself someplace unfamiliar (usually on Saturday mornings).

5.
“I am Dorothy... the small and meek.”

Judy Garland doesn't get a whole lot of humour to work into her characterization of Dorothy (most of it wisely reserved for her travelling companions), but her self-made introduction to Oz, the great and powerful, I happen to think is a stitch!

4.
“I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks. I do, I do, I do, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do, I do, I do, I do!”

Burt Lahr's imitable Cowardly Lion never fails to amuse, and of his plethora of delightful line deliveries, his terrified affirmation of faith in things that mean him bodily and mental harm tickles me the most. It's kinda the opposite of Peter Pan's audience-beseeching “I do believe in fairies”.

3.
“Lions, and tigers, and bears! Oh my!”

Part of what makes this classic mantra so memorable is that it builds to a quick chant, effectively ingraining itself in our permanent memories with its damn catchy rhythm. It lives more notoriously in the minds of zoologists and naturalists you'll tell you that nowhere on earth can you find coexisting lions, tigers, and bears, except maybe a zoo.

2.
-“What's she done? I'm all but lame from the bite on my leg.”
-“You mean she bit ya?”
-“No, her dog.”
-“Oh, she bit her dog, eh?”

I always crack a grin at this healthy bit of cheese, strategically sandwiched between the vilifying introduction of Miss Gulch and the melodramatic pathos of Toto been taken away, and cutely delivered by Charles Grapewin, who made a late-breaking career out of playing lovable geezers on film.

1.
“The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side.”

That ThD (Doctrine of Thinkology) obviously wasn't awarded to the Scarecrow for mathematical scholarship, as he infamously proceeds to misquote the Pythagorean theorem... in three ways! First off, the theorem only applies to right triangles, not isosceles. Secondly, it doesn't work for any two sides, but only the opposite and adjacent sides. And thirdly, the sum must be of the squares of the those two sides, not their square roots. I might derive more joy from correcting Ray Bolger every time I watch this scene than I do any other part of the movie!